Apple announced on December 1 that John Giannandrea, the company’s senior vice president for machine learning and AI strategy, is stepping down from his role.
Amar Subramanya, who worked at Google for 16 years, will now take over as the vice president of AI. In his LinkedIn profile, Subramanya states that his work at Google as the vice president of engineering involved Google’s AI model, Gemini.
“Subramanya brings a wealth of experience to Apple,” the company said. “His deep expertise in both AI and ML research and in integrating that research into products and features will be important to Apple’s ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features.”
Subramanya is also an alumnus of the Bangalore University, and the profile states he earned an engineering degree in electronics and communications in 2001. Besides Google, his work experience includes roles at IBM and Microsoft.
“Subramanya will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI safety and evaluation,” Apple added. However, Giannandrea will continue to serve as an advisor to Apple before retiring next year. Subramanya will report to Craig Federighi, the company's senior vice president of software.
The company’s leadership changes come as Apple faces sustained criticism over its standing in the AI race.
Apple has struggled to deliver several promised features in its Apple Intelligence suite—including the revamped Siri announced in 2024, which still hasn’t shipped and is now expected next year.
The features that are available have drawn repeated complaints about errors, factual mistakes and other reliability issues.
Recent reports indicate that Apple plans to sign a $1 billion deal with Google to use its Gemini models to power Siri. This would sit alongside Apple’s existing partnership with OpenAI, whose ChatGPT underpins parts of Apple Intelligence.
Having said that, this marks yet another moment for Indian-origin talent taking up top ranks in companies.
Recently, Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude family of models, announced Rahul Patil as its new CTO, taking over from co-founder Sam McCandlish.
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